Image by getty images

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on distributors to boycott Lunardelli, an Italian wine company that sells wine labeled with Nazi and fascist slogans and and photos of the movements’ leaders.

“Enough is enough,” Rabbis Marvin Hier, founder and dean, and Abraham Cooper, associate dean, of the Wiesenthal Center said in a statement released on the center’s website, saying they first protested the marketing of Lunardelli’s ‘Führerwein’ in 1995.

“Now an expanded line of wines that demean, diminish and mock Hitler’s victims are promoted on a slick website,” they wrote. “We reject the cynical notion by the company’s owner that this wine is marketed as ‘a joke gift.’”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Photos on the wine labels include Adolf Hitler, Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet chief Joseph Stalin and other figures.

Heir and Cooper denounced “the marketing of these products” and urged wine distributors “in Italy and around the world to send the only message the owner of this firm might understand—that they choose not to do any business with someone using the Nazi mass murderer as a blatant marketing tool.”

Lunardelli, which was founded in 1967, started labeling wine with pictures of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Che Guevara and others in 1995, as part of what it calls a “Historical Series,” and there have been periodic protests over such labeling.

Today, the company’s website states, about half of its bottled wine is marketed in the Historical Series, with more than 50 different labels, many if not most of them dealing with Hitler, Mussolini and Fascism. This, the Lunardelli website states, has made these wines a “cult object among the collectors.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount